Oct 15, 2015

For this year's theme of #RaiseYourVoice, this post is about defying the taboos against talking about the population explosion. There is a limit to the carrying capacity of the Earth. People have no natural predators to keep their populations in check. With fertility treatments, religious persuasions, poverty, and other forces at work, the 7+ billion people just keep increasing like a blight on the planet. There is no greater cause of devastation to the "third stone from the sun" than the humans.

Governments and media should be vigorously advancing solutions to the many tragedies of wildlife extinction, toxic water and air, and threats to human sustainability. But they don't even talk about human overpopulation. Citizens need to talk about it. Sadly, society is slow to talk about it too. Some of the reasons are explained at:Why We Deny the Realities of Population Growthby Laura Carroll | Huffington Post, Updated: 9/4/13

But more than the brave activists crying in a wilderness, regular people in all countries need to also talk about these losses and the negative impact of people on the planet. Various wildlife populations are suffering due to shootings by humans, poisons from man-made sources, and encroachment by humans. Many species are already among the planet's loss of animal life (see defaunation at Wikipedia).

For scientific reasons, humans should be eating a

plant-based diet. Meat-based industries are beneficial for meat producers. Increasingly, people have been choosing vegetarian diets because they are better for people and the planet (see Gene Bauer's books) but there is still a long way to go to raise the percentages of vegans and vegetarians.

From industrial toxics to war and the specter of nuclear attacks, we have many threats to people, wildlife, and the environment, but human overpopulation is the primary one. As the Zazzle store owner at vexpopuli explains so well and succinctly, humans are the only problem, all else is symptoms.

When the forests of the Pacific Northwest are logged, eroded and sprayed, and the corporations move to other continents to enact the same destruction, the fate of future life is similarly doomed. Ruining the ecosystems is shooting ourselves in the foot. But the main cause is increased consumerism from larger numbers of people.
Some people say killing sea lions and cormorants is good because of salmon considerations. They don’t discuss the fact that man-made causes such as salmon farms, over-fishing, runoff from livestock factories, urban sprawl, and logging are causes for salmon declines. Whether it’s cod and harp seals in the North Atlantic or salmon and California sea lions in the Pacific, the problem cannot be cured by slaughtering other animals of the air and sea. People have "scapegoated" other animals in a wide range of instances because it is convenient for them, but it is not honest.
Einstein said that man grows colder faster than the planet he inhabits. Certainly, by obliterating lions, rhinos, dolphins, seals, wolves, deer, bears, gulls, egrets, crows, pike and more, we are exhibiting rather heartless behaviors and teaching children that violent and murderous techniques are condoned. The shootings at schools are caused by a violent society. Eliminating the cause of problems, and safeguarding the future through prevention, is cheaper and more effective than trying to effect cures after the damage is done. But people need to raise their voices.